Music: Ann Wilson pays tribute to late, great rockers on 'Immortal'

By Jay N. Miller/For The Patriot Ledger

Wednesday

Aug 1, 2018 at 5:55 PM

Like a lot of us, Ann Wilson has been saddened by the recent deaths of so many iconic musicians. But the co-frontwoman of the band Heart found an effective way to channel her distress, and the result is a remarkable album, "Immortal," due to be released on September 14.

Ann Wilson and her own band will be in Boston Friday night, opening the Stars Align Tour for Jeff Beck and Paul Rodgers at Blue Hills Bank Pavilion.

Wilson's new album celebrates the music of 10 prominent artists who have died recently, all of them more or less in the rock 'n' roll genre. The performers she's chosen range from the fairly predictable like Tom Petty and David Bowie, to slightly more esoteric ones like Gerry Rafferty or Jack Bruce of Cream. Wilson includes Glenn Frey with the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane," and George Michael with "A Different Corner," and Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" seems like an unavoidable choice for such a collection. But Lesley Gore's 1960s hit "You Don't Own Me" has layers of new resonance in 2018.

Chris Cornell's hit, with Audioslave, "I Am the Highway" served as a particular touchstone, not least because Wilson saw him as just the kind of music world outsider she has been. She was quoted as seeing Cornell's song as the anthem of someone "who refuses to be tied down to the mundane, who is constantly looking for freedom and independence on a more universal scale, not just everyday reality."

Anyone who's read the 2012 autobiography of the band Heart, "Kicking and Dreaming," by Ann Wilson and her sister Nancy Wilson, knows that they were not an overnight success, but rather honed their abilities in years of unglamorous club dates in the Pacific Northwest. So in that sense, performing and interpreting other people's music is not a new thing for Wilson. Guitarist Warren Haynes and violinist Ben Mink guest on two tunes each on the new record.The Stars Align Tour was in St. Louis when we had a chance to talk with Wilson last week.

"Yes covers are how I learned how to sing," said Wilson, 68. "Doing other people's songs was how I paid my dues coming up as a young singer. As a singer, I've found, it doesn't matter who wrote a song, only if it expresses something I can really relate to, or not. All of the songs on this new album touch me deeply in some way.

"The overall theme of the album, I guess, is that there's seemed to be such an exodus, over the last several years of so many talented artists who inspired me," Wilson explained. "From Chris Cornell to Glenn Frey to Tom Petty, so many of them meant so much to all of us. When Chris Cornell passed, something clicked in me - I felt I had to do something. This record is about a whole generation of artists who not only played rock 'n' roll at a pretty high level musically, but also were able to write lyrics and really say something. I look at this record as a part of an oral tradition, a kind of living history to honor each one of them."

Wilson took pains to choose the songs to represent each artist, and in most cases they are not the obvious ones.

"I went through their whole body of work, and found the songs that meant the most to me," she explained. "I think I found a few that show how really relevant lyrics don't go out of fashion. That Lesley Gore hits was from 1964, and I tried to bring it forward to 2018. When Lesley did it, she was a teenage girl asking for respect from her boyfriend. Now, that song could be a woman singing it to anyone.

"There's a couple of songs I chose that have a little political aspect," said Wilson. "David Bowie's 'I'm Afraid of Americans' is a little sardonic look at things. And Cream's "Politician," is an example where today our social media makes almost anything have different meaning to different people."

Most longtime music fans remember Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street," as it was all over the radio that year that it came out. It always puzzled many fans that he was essentially a one-hit wonder, albeit a talented songsmith.

"Oh that sax solo was on every radio," Wilson agreed. "That song was pretty omnipresent when it came out. I wanted to do it with big rock guitars. The idea to me was that it's about chasing a dream, and doing everything right, and still getting no takers. I wanted to put it out there as the singer's feelings inside, about their opportunity, when one door closes, another one opens. I've had friends say 'Wow, we can't wait to hear the sax solo on yours,' and I understand, that was the hook on that original version. But I made it my mission to re-frame the song without saxophone."

Clearly, there are many Eagles songs suffused with Glenn Frey's writing, so that was a difficult choice.

"I really did try to stay away from just doing hits," Wilson said. "I wanted to choose a Frey song that was not a hit, but that is hard. So it became which one I could relate to the most. 'Life in the Fast Lane' really reflected the life and experiences a lot of us lived in the 1970s, in that super-materialistic rock star life. It was about believing in the fantasy life, and it was really fun at first. With that tune, I really wanted to shake it out of that whole L.A. rock thing, so we moved it into more of a jungle rhythm type feel."

Any singer has their work cut out for them when they attempt to cover a Winehouse song, but Wilson greatly admired the late British singer's signature hit.

"Amy Winehouse's 'Back in Black" - those words are incredible," said Wilson. "The song is endlessly dark, lyrically, but she was so casual with them, giving it a finger-snapping Motown groove. That was cool for her, but I wanted to strip that away, and take the words in their purest sense. We took the song in a dark, Gothic chamber music direction, and it gets super black. We felt at some points it could be too much of a bummer to do that, but we went down that rabbit hole anyway. It's like a trip down that poisonous people hole, and ultimately it was really fun, and Ben Mink did some superb work on it with violin."

Leonard Cohen's "1000 Kisses Deep" is certainly an evocative ballad in his rendition, and again, one would wonder how could anyone improve on it.

"The Leonard Cohen song is probably my favorite song of this batch," Wilson said. "It starts like an opera, and then it's like you go out to the middle of a stormy ocean."

The Tom Petty choice is not anything obvious, but "Luna" from his first album with the Heartbreakers.

"I thought that song was really kind of undeveloped, as good as it was on his first record," Wilson pointed out. "I had what I thought was a really cool idea of how to do it, and got Warren Haynes to play on it. I think we came up with a version that makes it really sound fresh. But with an artist like Tom, it is not easy to go through all his great songs and choose one."

On that subject of covers, few fans will ever forget the 2012 Kennedy Center ceremony where Led Zeppelin was honored, and their music was performed by Heart.

"That was one night we really didn't want to screw it up," Wilson said, laughing. "Doing covers of people you really admire like that is a high honor, and we always try to be respectful, but also lend it our own spin."

Wilson will be performing with her own solo band on this tour, which includes guitarist Craig Bartok, a 12-year veteran of Heart, and keyboardist Dan Walker. Her setlist is tilted towards the forthcoming album, and with Heart on hiatus, she lets fans down easy on that subject.

"On this tour I get 45 minutes to make my statement," Wilson noted. "I only do 'Barracuda,' early in the set, and then tell them this is not a Heart oldies show. This is a fun set, however, and songs from my new album are right up in the front of it."